Dr. Richard FitzHugh

Maryland, U.S.A.

Richard (Dick) FitzHugh (b. March 30, 1922, in Concord, Massachusetts, d. November 21, 2007) studied biology at the University of Colorado and received his PhD. in Biophysics from Johns Hopkins University. Moving to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD, FitzHugh began working Dr. Stephen Kuffler and, later, Dr. Kenneth (Kacy) Cole, a collaboration that lasted until his retirement in 1985. (This picture was taken in 1984).

While simulating the Hodgkin-Huxley model on an analog computer, FitzHugh created one of the most influential models of excitable dynamics, the FitzHugh-Nagumo Model, which became a standard tool in computational neuroscience, cardiodynamics, reaction-diffusion systems, and many other areas of applied mathematics. Much of the current understanding of dynamic mechanisms in neuronal threshold phenomena is due to FitzHugh's pioneering research, and many consider him a father of mathematical neuroscience.